For creators · Private label
Salt Road develops, manufactures, and ships your own gluten-free or vegetarian food brand — formulated for your audience, made in our 10,000 sq ft facility in Paterson, NJ. You fund the project. You own everything that comes out of it.
The deal, plainly
You're paying for a service. The recipe, the brand, the inventory — all yours. We do the food work; you do the marketing. That's the whole arrangement.
Who this is for
The economics only work for people with reach into a community that buys food. We don't have a follower minimum — we have a willingness-to-invest minimum.
Your audience has a medical reason to read every label. A product they can trust is a product they'll buy from you.
Cookbook authors, recipe accounts, lifestyle creators. Your kitchen point of view becomes the shelf-stable version.
If your audience already pays attention to ingredients, they'll pay attention to your product.
Not the right fit
Pricing
The starter project gets you from idea to a finished, shelf-ready first batch. Reorders move onto our standard co-packing terms.
Starter project
Idea to first batch
from $15,000
One-time, scoped per project.
More complex categories — multi-component products, regulated processes, custom packaging tooling — quote higher. We give you a fixed scope before any money moves.
After launch
Per batch
Standard co-packing terms. You pay for what we make.
See our co-packing service for the production-side details.
How it works
A 30-minute call about your audience, the product you have in mind, and your timeline.
A fixed scope and price for the starter project. Nothing moves until you sign.
Benchtop iterations until you taste it and approve. We handle nutritional analysis and shelf-life in parallel.
We schedule production, run it, pack it, and hand off finished inventory ready to sell.
As your audience buys, we schedule reorders against forecast under standard co-pack terms.
FAQ
You do. This is not a licensing deal and Salt Road does not take an equity or royalty stake. You fund the work, and you own the formulation, the brand, and the inventory we produce for you.
No. This service is for creators who have an audience and are ready to put capital behind a product. We're a manufacturer, not a venture backer. If you're looking for someone to fund the launch in exchange for a stake, this isn't the right fit.
There's no hard number, but a starter project needs to clear roughly $15,000 in upfront cost plus inventory you can actually move. Most creators with an engaged audience of 50,000 or more in the gluten-free, Celiac, vegetarian, or wellness space have the reach to make this work.
Shelf-stable and refrigerated gluten-free and vegetarian foods: baked goods, snacks, mixes, sauces, dressings, granolas, energy bites, spice blends, beverages, and similar categories. We don't make meat, poultry, fish, or shellfish products.
Brand identity and label design, photography, e-commerce setup, paid ads, and influencer marketing of any kind. We focus on making the product, scheduling production, and shipping. We can refer you to designers and 3PLs we trust.
Most projects take 8 to 16 weeks from the first call to a finished first production run, depending on category complexity, packaging lead times, and how decisive you are on the formulation.
Reorders run on our standard co-packing terms. We schedule production runs against your forecast, you pay for materials and production time, and we ship to you or to a fulfillment partner.
Yes. You own the formulation. If you outgrow us or find a better fit, you can take the recipe and go. We'd rather have you happy than have you stuck.
Start a project
Quick reply, no pitch. If it's a fit we'll send a scoped quote within a week.